Genesis 28:10-19a, Psalm 139: 1-11, 22-23
Romans 8:12-25 Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
Lectionary Link
A basic technique of Jesus for teaching and communication was the parable. A parable is a story which provides wisdom insights about life and certainly Jesus was one we might designate as a wisdom teacher.
Wisdom is not what we call science; wisdom has more to do with the ordering our inner lives of feelings and values and motivations to propel what we do and say in our lives.
One of the basic themes of the parables of Jesus was the kingdom of heaven or kingdom of God. First why does Matthew's Gospel use "kingdom of heaven" and not "kingdom of God?" One theory is that the reading audience of Matthew were predominately from a Jewish background and since in respect for the name of God, the word heaven was put in the place of God's holy unpronounceable name.
Jesus came to teach us the wisdom of God, the wisdom of heaven while we very much live in the realm or kingdom of this world. The wisdom of heaven which can be derived from being born from above, involves someone who was conversant in the heavenly realm, the inner spiritual realm, and who communicated this to us in the earthly realm.
We've read today the story of the dream of Jacob about a ladder from heaven on which angels traveled up and down.
In the Gospel John, Jesus said to Nathaniel that he would see the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. Jesus, then is Jacob's ladder, in that he connects the invisible abode of the divine with the earthly landing on the bottom rung. Angels are messengers, symbolic of the messages which come through Jesus as the connecting ladder of the heavenly with the earthly.
St. Paul noted that the world is subjected to futility. Futility might be described as thwarted hope, unrealized aspirations for things which seem so appropriate and right.
Jesus told the parable of the weeds and the wheat to give us insights about the experience of futility due to the conditions of freedom which prevail in the passage of time.
Jesus indicates that the human situation is like the life of a frustrated, challenged and yet hopeful farmer or gardener. We plant and we hope for optimal outcomes, but in the conditions of freedom allow pests and weeds to challenge the success of our hopeful dreams.
And what is required of us as earthly gardeners? Patience. In the impatience of rage we wish that we could just go "Rambo" on our enemies, all of the weeds which challenge the full success of our lives.
We wish the field of freedom could be instantly rid of all evil by pulling up all of the weeds of evil. But to rid the field of all of the weeds, we are reminded that such weeds in field of freedom are intertwined with all that is good. And so we must be patient to tolerate the conditions until the time of harvest when what is good can survive and nurture future life. That which is unworthy is separated and not allowed to be perpetuated.
As gardeners of living, we have to be patient for the cycles in the passing of time for things to come to pass.
The entire council of God or Christ are not revealed in the parable of the weeds and wheat. Only the passive side of patience. Yes, like gardeners we have to be patient. Most of the biblical writings were written by people very unlike those of us who are white in America. Biblical writings were written by people without political power; people who were oppressed and suppressed. So, they needed insights about being patient. If the Jews and early Christians thought that they could attack the weeds of evil of their Roman overlords, they knew that all of their good would be lost as well. They had to abide in patience.
What the parable does not give to us is the responsibility that people with power, privilege and wealth have to prevent the injustice and oppression, and evil in our world.
Just think about slaves in America for many years. Just think about indigenous peoples in America for many years. Were they and are they supposed to just be patient waiting for the harvest when their oppressors are sorted out sent to the dust bin of history?
We certainly should not use this parable of Jesus to tolerate the delay of justice for all people, if we have the power to bring it to full practice and to right the wrongs of the evil of our past.
If we are people in futility today, faced with some evil, over which we have no control, let us have the patience of a good gardener to wait for things to pass.
But us not regard ourselves as helpless gardeners,as passive ones who can do nothing about the presence of injustice that is in our ability to weed out.
All of us live under the cosmic futility of time, aging and death; and for this cosmic futility we need the cosmic patience of endurance.
But let us not accept cosmic futility as an excuse for not working in our own garden patches to rid this world of the oppression of injustice and all inhumanity to everyone in our world.
The patience of God does not give us the excuse to delay justice in the garden of this world. We will not appreciate the anger of Jesus, if we are happy to delay justice for many to a future heaven.
May God give us today the cosmic patience for our cosmic futility in knowing time, aging and death; but may God give us the impatient, anger of Jesus to bring righteous justice to everyone whom we can now. Amen.
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